The Leadership Caffeine Blog
Scale your impact as a manager—six areas where you need to do the heavy lifting
To those with managerial experience who strive to do more, the climb does not always matter. It's much about growing your impact. I work with many seasoned managers who are hungry to do more, learn more, and challenge themselves while finding new ways to contribute to...
Scale your impact as a manager—six areas where you need to do the heavy lifting
For those with managerial experience striving to scale their impact, there are at least six key areas to focus on developing your skills and abilities.
Leadership Caffeine™—Good Managers Observe The Characters, Not Just the Action
The best managers are devoted students of the art of character study—not out of some desire to play armchair psychologist, but rather out of the desire to help.
Leaders: Are You Coaching Your Teams for Creativity?
There’s little doubt creativity is vital in the workplace, and that idea generation is the enabler of creative problem solving and innovation. The better our teams and colleagues are at generating ideas, the better the odds of surviving and thriving in our topsy-turvy world. Yet, idea generation and problem-solving practices are stale and decidedly lacking in creativity in too many organizations.
Want to Make a Career Change? Expect to Do Some Heavy Lifting
There are no quick fixes, magic beans, or silver bullets to get the work out of your career pivot project. While everyone’s journey is different, there’s a common thread: you have to think, think deeply, be creative, be willing to explore, and ultimately, be ready to experiment before identifying the right “next” in your career. In other words, you need to do the heavy lifting required for a successful career pivot.
Ten Lessons from Experienced Managers Hungry to Learn and Grow
Last week I wrapped up two different cohorts of my Experienced Manager Program. In twelve hours of program time spread over multiple sessions, the ideas and insights flowed, and I left impressed with the passion so many have for their work leading and managing. Here are some of my favorite insights from the program:
Donuts and Other Insights on Teaming from the Latest Leadership Caffeine Jam Session
Our March Leadership Caffeine Jam Session was all about finding the magic with teams. As usual, the chat stream commentary from our attendees was fabulous. I’m sharing some insights from this 50-minute session.
How Will You Describe the Leader You Aspire to Be?
If you are interested in taking that next step as a leader, it pays to silence the outside voices and spend some time mining your experiences, influences, and aspirations.
When Challenging Conversations Go Unspoken—A Leader’s Nightmares
Be very afraid of the conversations on the tough topics of performance, improvement, and innovation that aren’t taking place on your team or in your organization.
Leaders: How Hard are You Thinking About These Two BIG Issues?
There are two issues every person in a leadership role must constantly focus on and work on: (1) who they aspire to be as leaders and (2) how hard they are working at developing their skills as strategists. Anything less than daily work on these issues is a problem.
Leadership Caffeine™—If You’re Leading Change, Expect Flak
Don’t let the flak derail your transformation initiative. Instead, dive in to understand the core of any resistance better and strive to build your coalition. Transformation initiatives succeed on the strength of relationships, not ideas.